AisleOne. A visual journal on design, photography, film, music and culture.
Burton Kramer is a graphic designer living in Toronto that played an important role in bringing the International Typographic Style to Canadian design during the 60s and 70s. He’s most famous for the excellent logo that he designed for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1974, which is pictured here. You can see some more examples of the logo use as well as a video of the logo sequence seen on TV. The Center for Contemporary Canadian Art has an excellent online archive of Kramer’s work.
Thomas Williams, one of the talents behind the excellent Process Journal, has documented the changes that were made to the grid system for Edition Two of the journal. Thomas writes:
The Process Journal grid has undergone several updates for Edition Two, the major change being an increase in the size of the internal gutter from 30mm up to 40mm. Although this may appear to be only a minor adjustment, it changes the dynamics of the grid in several different ways.
The extra 10mm was taken from the outside columns, otherwise reserved for image captions and room for the reader’s thumbs to hold the publication (with minimal overlay of the content). The space was removed evenly from these columns to minimize the change in visual consistency from the previous edition.
Increasing this gutter also proved to be advantageous to the overall layout of the publication and resulted in three outcomes: firstly, by centralizing the content further into the middle of the page allowing more padding and easier reading of type that falls within the two central columns; secondly, it allows a larger clearance for images placed over or near the edge of the gutter—thus minimizing the loss of image into the spine; and lastly, the increase results in an overall wider area of content.
The original objective was to create a grid that was flexible enough to deal with a wide range of content, enable flexibility and retain visual consistency. This objective still remains; hence the vast majority of grid has been unaltered and has proven itself worthy for a second time. In our experience it is a rare to have the chance to revisit and refine a project so we have embraced the opportunity and believe that small changes like these contribute to our endeavor of producing an always-improving publication.
Oppositions was an architectural journal by the Institute For Architecture And Urban Studies that was published from 1973 to 1984. The magazine was designed by the great Massimo Vignelli and it sure doesn’t disappoint with its obvious grid layout. This Flickr set includes a bunch of the covers, some of which feature black illustrations, and this set by Paul Soulellis has some shots of the inside spreads.
I was outbid on a copy of this a few months back. Would have made a great addition to my collection — maybe I’ll start to obsessively search for them now.
Sydney based studio, Toko, has been one of my favorites for a while now. They’re always pumping out fresh new work that’s inspiring. They updated their site with a new look and a plethora or work.
Simply perfect 1968 ad for Sunn Amplifiers. After a quick search I found some more.
Buddy Carr Skateboards just released L’Esigenza Della Velocità, a new longboard that I designed for them. The board features an innovative flush mount truck system that lowers the deck height, giving the rider better stability and control.
In Italian, “L’Esigenza Della Velocità” means “The Needs for Speed”, and that’s were I pulled most of my inspiration from. I’ve always been inspired by the beautiful graphic design and gorgeous color palettes present on racing cars from the 60’s and 70’s, and I tried to pay tribute to that minimal aesthetic is this design. It represents a time when graphic design was simpler and not bloated like it is today.
For the colors, I’ve been wanting to use a fluorescent Pantone for sometime now and the color Pantone 805 seemed to make sense for this piece. Coupled with a dark gray, I think it created a nice modern touch to the retro design. 805 is stunning in person.
For the layout, I composed the elements using the Golden Ratio. Might seem like overkill for something like this but it presented a pretty interesting composition that felt balanced to me. Here’s a screenshot of the guides in my Illustrator file that I created using the Golden Ratio. Because of the limited space on skateboards, I usually end up cropping elements to create a more interesting visual. I tried layouts where all the elements lived within the space, but that felt too unnatural and claustrophobic. Having elements bleed off the skateboard gives a sense of openness that I prefer. The checkered flag graphic and 805 color are continued onto the wheels to give the package a unified look.
When it came time to think about the typography, I knew that I wanted to design a typeface myself. Taking inspiration from vintage racing graphics, I designed a sans-serif that exhibits contemporary features, but that still retains that vintage feel. At least I think it does. My plan is to create a full typeface out of this, but we’ll see how that goes.
As with the other boards I’ve designed for Buddy, this was blast to do and I’m looking forward to creating some new designs for the lineup. We’re already in early phases of a new deck that continues this retro race aesthetic. Stay tuned!
For more pictures of the Velocita board, and to buy one, head over to the Buddy Carr site.